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When Rob Reiner first brought This Is Spinal Tap to theaters in 1984, he and his collaborators managed something that seemed impossible: they invented an entire genre while simultaneously skewering it. The mockumentary was not new as a concept, but the way Spinal Tap crystallized the absurdities of rock culture—its vanity, its delusions, its unintentional hilarity—was lightning in a bottle. For years afterward, comedians and musicians alike quoted it as gospel. The film became the rare cult object that simultaneously reshaped the landscape it lampooned.
Forty-one years later, the band is back. And if Spinal Tap II: The End Continues is not lightning in a bottle, it’s at least static electricity in a wool sweater: familiar, funny in spurts, and gently tinged with melancholy. Reiner, again donning the cargo vest of documentarian Marty DiBergi, directs this reunion with the weary affection of a man who knows the audience is here for one thing: to see Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest), David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean), and Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) bicker, strut, and fail upward one more time.
The premise is almost aggressively perfunctory. A buried clause in a decades-old contract requires the band to stage a final reunion concert—this time in New Orleans at the gloriously ridiculous Smoothie King Arena (a venue name so sublimely Tap-like that it needs no punch line). There is no grand myth-making here, no pretense that the music still matters in a world dominated by K-pop and TikTok. The band is dusty, petty, out of touch—and all the better for it.
Geriatric Power Chords
One of the pleasures of this sequel is the sheer mundanity of what the characters have been doing during their long hiatus. David composes music for murder podcasts and a low-budget horror flick titled Night of the Assisted Living Dead. Nigel has become a cheesemonger in Berwick-upon-Tweed, playing pub gigs on the side and proudly demonstrating a Rube Goldberg–like array of guitar pedals that produce sounds no human ear should welcome. Derek, for his part, runs a glue museum in London and has written a symphony titled Hell Toupé, a pun groan-worthy enough to feel perfectly Tap.
These absurd side careers are not just jokes; they’re quiet reminders of what happens when performers outlive their cultural moment. The humor here is less anarchic than in the original film and more resigned, as though the characters themselves are aware of the punch line and half-in on it. When Nigel and David resume their lifelong squabble—arguing over a melody only one of them can hear—the lines are sharp, but the bitterness feels softened by age. (“You can’t hear it over the sound of your mind snapping shut,” David sneers, and the sting lingers.)
Death by Drumming, Again
The search for a new drummer is one of the film’s running gags, and it remains endearingly ridiculous. The Tap legacy of percussionists dying in spectacularly random fashion has now claimed eleven victims. Celebrity cameos provide some of the biggest laughs here: Questlove declines the gig over Zoom, citing a colonoscopy; Lars Ulrich appears, bewildered; and even the Blue Man Group somehow manages to self-destruct. The eventual recruit, Didi (Valerie Franco), is a sunny, tattooed powerhouse who brings actual vitality to the aging band. Derek immediately convinces himself that she’s romantically interested, but the film wisely undercuts his delusion, turning the joke back on the bassist’s vanity.
Franco, an actual drummer, delivers a performance of kinetic joy—her blindfolded solo is a highlight—and she nearly steals the film from the original trio. It’s a rare example of a legacy sequel introducing a younger character without making the exercise feel like a corporate baton-passing. Franco is not here to inherit Tap’s mantle; she’s here to expose their ridiculousness by playing better than they ever could.
Cameos, Callbacks, and Contractual Obligations
Like many legacy sequels, The End Continues is packed with cameos, some sharp, others perfunctory. Fran Drescher and Paul Shaffer reprise their label-executive roles to diminishing but still pleasant effect. Elton John appears long enough to tumble off a stage in a bit of slapstick that knowingly mirrors Tap’s own pratfalls. Paul McCartney, by contrast, provides one of the film’s slyest pleasures: watching him grimace as if he’s caught a whiff of sour milk while the band rehearses.
The industry remains the closest thing the film has to a villain. Chris Addison’s Simon Howler, a promoter who literally cannot process music, embodies the modern entertainment machine’s soullessness. He subjects the band to physical training, courtesy of John Michael Higgins’s flamboyant instructor Bob Kipness, whose conga-line regimen feels like a parody of every corporate wellness retreat. These detours are funny but airy, like sketches padded to fill time before the main event.
The Main Event That Isn’t
And then, finally, there is the concert. It is brief, sloppy, and anticlimactic by design. The songs are not transcendent or even particularly memorable. But that is, of course, the point. Spinal Tap was never meant to be transcendent. They were always a middle-tier British metal act puffed up on ego and clichés. To expect them to deliver a cathartic finale would be to misunderstand the joke. What we get instead is the sight of three aging men, still petty, still delusional, but also still capable of reminding us why their failure was always the funniest possible success.
The Melancholy Behind the Mockery
What lingers after the credits roll is not the laughter but the melancholy. Back in 1984, calling Tap “aging rockers” was already a joke. Today, Guest, McKean, and Shearer really are old men. Their parody of decline has caught up with them. When Derek struts in his “DOES IT LOOK INFECTED” T-shirt, or when Nigel proudly describes a cheese too pungent for human consumption, the comedy carries a faint, unintended sadness.
That sadness is not a weakness. If anything, it enriches the film. The passage of time has turned Tap into something they never intended to be: poignant. Like the cheese in Nigel’s shop, they have ripened, soured, and acquired an aroma that is both off-putting and strangely appealing. The film acknowledges mortality without wallowing in it. Unlike Jackass Forever, which made aging and injury its explicit theme, The End Continues is content to suggest that the absurdity of life only grows funnier when you can’t quite hear the notes anymore.
A Joke That Still Plays
So is Spinal Tap II: The End Continues a good movie? Not exactly. It’s a shambling, uneven, cameo-stuffed mockusequel that often feels more like a DVD extra than a theatrical release. But is it funny? Yes, often. Is it necessary? Absolutely not. Does it still make you laugh in spite of yourself, and occasionally wince at its rueful honesty? Without question.
The original Spinal Tap was a miracle of comic invention. Its sequel is more modest: a reminder that sometimes, simply showing up again is enough. Like the amplifiers that “go to eleven,” the band’s humor still operates just slightly beyond the normal scale. The joke may no longer feel revolutionary, but it is still funny, still oddly moving, and still ours.
In the end, the band hasn’t aged like fine wine. They’ve aged like Nigel’s favorite cheese—stinky, misshapen, but unmistakably alive. And for fans who’ve been waiting four decades, that may be more than enough.
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